But as Graham neared the precincts of the cathedral his ear caught a grave and solemn music, which he at first supposed to come from within the building. But as he paused and looked round, he saw a group of the German military, on whose stalwart forms and fair manly earnest faces the setting sun cast its calm lingering rays. They were chanting, in voices not loud but deep, Luther’s majestic hymn:
“Nun danket alle Gott.” The chant awed even the ragged beggar boys who had followed the Englishman, as they followed any stranger, would have followed King William himself, whining for alms. “What a type of the difference between the two nations!” thought Graham; “the Marseillaise, and Luther’s Hymn!” While thus meditating and listening, a man in a general’s uniform came slowly out of the cathedral, with his hands clasped behind his back, and his head bent slightly downwards. He, too, paused on hearing the hymn; then unclasped his hand and beckoned to one of the officers, to whom approaching he whispered a word or two, and passed on towards the Episcopal palace. The hymn hushed, and the singers quietly dispersed. Graham divined rightly that the general had thought a hymn thanking the God of battles might wound the feelings of the inhabitants of the vanquished city—not, however, that any of them were likely to understand the language in which the thanks were uttered. Graham followed the measured steps of the general, whose hands were again clasped behind his back—the musing habit of Von Moltke, as it had been of Napoleon the First. Continuing his way, the Englishman soon reached the house in which the Count von Rudesheim was lodged, and, sending in his card, was admitted at once through an anteroom in which sate two young men, subaltern officers apparently employed in draughting maps, into the presence of the Count.
“Pardon me,” said Graham, after the first conventional salutation, “if I interrupt you for a moment or so in the midst of events so grave, on a matter that must seem to you very trivial.”
“Nay,” answered the Count, “there is nothing so trivial in this world but what there will be some one to whom it is important. Say how I can serve you.”
“I think, M. le Comte, that you once received in your household, as teacher or governess, a French lady, Madame Marigny.”
“Yes, I remember her well—a very handsome woman. My wife and daughter took great interest in her. She was married out of my house.”
“Exactly—and to whom?”
“An Italian of good birth, who was then employed by the Austrian Government in some minor post, and subsequently promoted to a better one in the Italian dominion, which then belonged to the house of Hapsburg, after which we lost sight of him and his wife.”
“An Italian—what was his name?”
“Ludovico Cicogna.”